Post by Tatiana Segura

Director of CBTE and the Center for Materials in Medicine at Duke | Developing Biomaterials for Stroke Recovery, Chronic Wound Healing, and Transplant Tolerance

Excited to share a new paper from our lab led by Nhi Phan, with an incredible team including Jeremy Thomas, Aiden Pasinsky, Zoe Meadows, Ting Ting Li, Augustus Adams, Yike Zhu, Anna Edgcomb, Yi Shi, Sihan Lyu, and Timothy Dunn: Co-delivery of synaptogenic and angiogenic nanoparticles in MAP scaffolds enhances post-stroke synapse formation This project represents an important part of Nhi’s PhD work. In earlier studies, we showed that MAP scaffolds with clustered VEGF (CLUVENA) promote vascularization and axonal sprouting after stroke. But functional recovery still lagged. That led to a key thesis question: If we rebuild blood vessels and encourage axons to grow… are we actually rebuilding functional connections? In this study, Nhi explored adding a synaptogenic cue — thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1) — to actively promote synapse formation within the infarct. More in the comments ⬇️